Sunday, September 5, 2010

Belgium still in crisis

This is not exactly man bites dog news but I thought readers might like to know that Elio di Rupo, a Socialist leader who was trying to form a coalition government, has resigned.

The king's next step was to ask one representative of each community -- the Francophone speaker of the lower house of parliament, Andre Flahaut of the Socialist Party, and the speaker of the Senate, Danny Pieters of the Flemish separatist party N-VA -- to mediate to restart the talks.

Furthermore, those commenters who insisted that there is a Prime Minister in Belgium, albeit a caretaker one, and his name is Yves Leterme, were right. He has just passed "a bill to cut the budget gap to 4.8 percent of gross domestic product this year, from a previous plan of 5.6 percent". Some good things might come out of this ritual crisis.

Yves Leterme, the Belgian prime minister and current holder of the rotating EU presidency, plans to propose a new machinery to prevent a repeat of Europe's sovereign bond crisis. "This should evolve into a European debt agency able to issue debt for all member states. Everybody will gain from the mechanism," he said at the annual Ambrosetti conference of global policymakers at Lake Como, Italy. The idea would be the next logical step beyond the eurozone's €440bn bail-out fund agreed in May.

I think we will soon see the Pasarelle Clause be brought out to finese the Lisbon treaty.